It Fits, But it Doesn’t Belong…

I took a deep breath knowing it was time…

Time to take another step, reach out for the next journey, yet just the thought of it caused old wounds I was sure had healed to break open… just this one last time.

Closing my eyes I drifted back… the sparrow’s song floating through an open window on a breeze scented heavily of pine and cedar. My baby’s laugh trickling from the other room to mine. Sunshine kissing the wild roses just below the window sill. A lifetime of planning, hoping, preparing had taken me there. All the dreams of a girl…

I opened my eyes and looked down at it again wondering if it still fit… I took my ring off the elegant glass tea pot that had been passed down to me from my great grandma. It had been told to me that she used to rest her wedding ring on it and someday it would graciously hold mine. I was the first broken marriage it had seen… Tenderly, I held my promise. One ring, two bands, soldered together. The symbol of love. I slipped it on my finger and held out my hand to view it just this one last time. It was so beautiful, so delicate, and it still fit! But it didn’t belong…

All of the sudden things that had been so a part of me became strangers. Secrets I had harbored were being torn away and the vacancy left was harrowing. Emotion rushed in to fill the void, echoing in the silence of the past. I chased the days, the fields, the sunsets all the way back to the beginning. Like gathering leaves in a wind storm though I was left with only fragments and pieces of what once was.

Through tears, ebbing up from an ocean of lost hopes and shattered dreams, the diamonds blurred. Silently, I let old memories run down my cheeks. The good, the bad, the years…

Pressing my lips against the bitterness of that moment, I kissed the precious stone just this one last time before slipping it off, forever…

I whispered goodbye to the life behind me, the life that ring was a token of, and let it fall…

My heart in all its brokenness has searched to find places for everything that still fits… But today I have come to realize, just because it fits doesn’t mean it belongs…